Not only are there plans to disfigure and destroy forest regions in Germany, it is already a sad reality in Vermont (New England). Here an aerial photo of a portion of the Lowell Mountain wind park shows how the once natural mountain was blasted with dynamite and forests cleared and industrialized. Photo: courtesy of Daniel F.

When asked if they agreed with the statement: “For the construction of more wind energy, in general no forest areas should disappear or be cut down.”, 79 percent replied with: “I agree!” Only 11% agreed with: “for additional wind parks also forest areas should be cleared away or cut down.” The Emnid Institute survey also determined that the public’s interest in the issue of wind parks in forests is very high. Only 8% said that the issue did not interest them.

For the Deutsche Wildtier Stiftung, the Emind results prove that a large majority of the German population reject wind parks in forests. “Wind power at any cost must not be the result of the Engergiewende,” emphasized Prof. Dr. Fritz Vahrenholt, Chairman of the German Wildlife Foundation. “The citizens of Germany do not want forests to become the victims of a one-dimensional climate policy.“ People think it is important to keep forests and biodiversity intact. Even 65% of those responding said: “In the case of any doubt, the construction of wind turbines must yield to the protection of birds and other animals”.

The thoughtless construction of wind energy in the forest is a serious threat. “Opening up forests to allow wind parks leads to the endangerment of rare species,” Prof. Dr. Vahrenholt criticized. Every year in Germany up to 240,000 bats are killed by wind turbine rotors. Although they are able to dodge the moving rotors, the negative pressure in the rotor’s wake causes the bats’ lungs to burst. Most of the domestic bats are on the endangered species list.

Bird species like the rare lesser spotted eagle, the red kite and the black stork are especially sensitive to turbines. For example half of the breeding population of the black stork disappeared in just 6 years at the Vogelsberg site in the state of Hesse after 125 wind turbines were constructed. Many predatory birds die in collisions with rotors.

“So far only the state of Saxony Anhalt has opted not to allow wind parks in forests,” says Prof. Vahrenholt. In German states with large forest areas, such as Baden-Wuerttemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate, North Rhine Westphalia, Hesse and Brandenburg, there are already decrees to allow the construction of wind parks despite regional resistance to them,” said Vahrenholt.

Moreover Emnid found that among those surveyed, wind energy in forests is not a matter of personal preference, but one of a greater good – namely forest as a space for life. On the question: “Would you feel disturbed about wind turbines in the forest?”, 43% answered with “yes”.

NSA spying scandals are being discussed by the public now, said Elsa Rassbach, anti-war activist from Code Pink. And this is a positive step towards throwing out the remains of having been occupied, she added.

WikiLeaks has published an intercept suggesting that the National Security Agency kept an eye on German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and many other senior German officials for years.

RT:Do you believe the NSA spying scandals have a significant effect on relations between Germany and the US?

Elsa Rassbach: I think the very fact that they are being discussed shows a huge shift, because this spying has been going on heavily during the whole Cold War. But the thing is that it continued after Germany supposedly received its sovereignty through the Two plus Four Agreement in 1990 and 91. Germany has allowed this whole time this spying, and has known about it, and has also allowed the bases here to be used for wars that Germany has said that they did not agree with, I mean the US military bases. The fact that now it’s even being discussed is already a very positive step.

RT:So why do you think the German government’s outrage publicly hasn’t been greater?

ER: I think that the new story that “Oh [Angela] Merkel’s cell phone was being listened to,” was really a ploy. It’s well known what the NSA was doing the whole time, and was set up to do, was to spy broadly on everyone around the world, except US citizens. What they changed in 2001 after the attack on the World Trade Center is that they decided, or four people decided: President [George] Bush, Vice President [Dick] Cheney, and the heads of the CIA and the NSA, that they would throw out the US Constitution and allow also the spying upon US citizens.

I’m absolutely certain that Adenauer’s [Konrad Adenauer, the first post-war Chancellor of Germany from 1949 to 1963] staff, his telephones, and all were spied upon. But at that time Germany was occupied. My question is: Why has it taken so long since Germany achieved sovereignty and was reunified in 1991; why has it taken so long since then? There are some reasons for it, but still think that the way the things are now, it’s almost like an anachronism and Germany does need to throw off the remains of having been occupied.

RT:How much pressure is Merkel under because of these revelations? Does it have an effect on the domestic politics in Germany?

ER: We do see that even some members of the CDU [Christian Democratic Union, Merkel’s party] are making comments and making demands. I think that a lot of the pressure is a big shift in public opinion in Germany. There was recently a Pew study in 2008 where they were asking many countries in Europe: “What’s your opinion of the freedoms that the US gives its citizens. Germans said in 2008, 70 percent had a positive view of this. In 2013, just prior to the Snowden revelations, Germans were 80 percent in favor of their view of the US attitude toward personal freedoms.

It’s now plunged to 43 percent in the last two years, which is the lowest number of any of the major European countries. So there is a big shift on the ground. There is a peace movement, there is a lot of talk now about Ramstein [US Air Force base situated in south-west Germany], drones, and that this surveillance has to end. This was not happening two years ago, or three years ago in the peace movement here. How much that will ultimately relay into sufficient parliamentary pressure and so forth on Chancellor Merkel to do something, I don’t know. And I also wonder whether there would be any pressure from the different corporations who have also been spied upon, whether they will also put pressure on the government about this.

Germany, the largest and most industrialized economy in the EU, projected as a key member of the continent’s economic, political, and defense organizations, is set to remain within the tight grip of the US, as Washington fears becoming isolated in the international arena amid the rise of the BRICS countries, according to a Russian Colonel General.

Germany, Europe’s most industrialized and populous country, famed for its technological achievements, is prohibited from acquiring its own nuclear weapons. It renounced the nuclear option in the Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968.

However, it is among the nations with the dubious distinction of hosting US nuclear weapons, along with Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey.

The removal of the US nuclear warheads from Germany is a long-term aim of the country’s government. However, the weapons remain in place.

Germany has 3,396 metric tons of gold: its vast reserves rank second worldwide. However, 45% of its gold, worth roughly $635 billion, is kept at the US Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Last year, Berlin announced that it wouldn’t repatriate its gold reserves from the US; instead the Bundesbank issued an official statement underscoring its “trust” in its American partners.

According to Bloomberg, Germany gave up after repatriating just 5 metric tons of gold, though earlier it was told that it would get all the German gold back by 2020.

Russian Colonel General Leonid Ivashov has therefore explained why Berlin is so dependent on the US and is set to remain in its tenacious arms.

“The US is cautious that by acquiring its own nuclear weapons, Germany would become militarily and politically independent. Such attempts have been undertaken by then-chancellors Helmut Kohl and Gerhard Schröder,” he told Vesti Nedeli (News of the Week), a television program on the Russian TV channel Rossiya-1.

“Germany, France and Belgium attempted to create their own militarily-political block, but those attempts have been suppressed by the Americans,” he added.

Instead, Ivashov said, the US is sending more weapons and servicemen to the country.

“The Americans fear ending up alone at the end of the day. Thus, they are trying to tie up Europe, weakening it through Ukraine and anti-Russian sanctions. They flood it with arms, troops and military equipment in order to stop its efforts to break free from America’s grip.”

Germany’s DWD National Weather Service has developed a nasty habit of putting out warmed up press releases for announcing monthly mean data, and then later very quietly revising the data downwards.

Result: the public believes that warming is happening when in fact there really isn’t any.

German skeptic site wobleibtdieglobaleerwaermung(whereistheglobalwarming) writes a post titled: “What’s wrong with the DWD? Once again a downward correction. June 2015 was 0.2° Celsius colder than reported in the press releases”.

It describes how the June 2015 mean temperature for Germany was overstated by 0.2°C in its press release. It adds:

”… The first month of the summer with a nationwide mean temperature of 16.0 °C was 0.6°C above the international valid reference period of 1961 to 1990. Using the 1981 to 2010 reference period the deviation was still 0.3°C…”

Here the wobleibtdieerderwaermung site also points out yet another sloppy error made by the DWD: the difference between the two reference periods for June is in fact 0.4°C, and not 0.3°C, citing a 2014 DWD press release here.

So, did the DWD issue a correction to inform the public of the true June 2015 result, that it was in fact cooler then they had claimed earlier? The wobleibtdieerderwaermung writes:

At the DWD homepage http://www.dwd.de/ one finds at a well hidden location, after a total of seven (7) clicks, the value of 15.8 °C for June in Germany – all the way down, to the right.”

In other words, the DWD made sure to bury the real results, to keep them as much out of sight from the public as they could.

wobleibtdieerderwaermung suggests that the DWD ought to issue a new press release with the following content so that the public can be properly informed:

… The first month of the summer with a nationwide mean temperature of 15.8 °C was 0.4°C above the international vaild reference period of 1961 to 1990. Using the 1981 to 2010 reference period the deviation was only 0.0°C, and thus was exactly the mean for the WMO reference period… a climate warming in Germany’s June 2015 is thus not detectable over the last 35 years.”

So what’s compelling the DWD to engage in the habitual deceptive behavior? wobleibtdieerderwaermung speculates that all this probably has nothing to do with error and has more to do with “political intentions”.

Yet another government institution that we can no longer believe. Little wonder trust in government is near an all-time low.

The Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO) published a monograph clarifying the projected short and long-term costs of anti-Russian sanctions to the EU 28 plus Switzerland. A summary of the report published Friday has confirmed that Europe as a whole expects €92.34 billion in long-term losses, along with over 2.2 million lost jobs.

While the report attempts to downplay somewhat the losses attributed to sanctions, noting that politicized export restrictions must be considered together with the ongoing Russian recession and other factors, the figures speak for themselves.

The report projects an “observed decline in exports and tourism expenditures of €34 billion value added in the short run, with employment effects on up to 0.9 million people.” Switching to a longer-term perspective, the report estimates “the economic effects increas[ing] to up to 2.2 million jobs (around 1 percent of total employment) and €92 billion (0.8 percent of total value added), respectively.”

Commenting on the geographical disbursement of the economic and jobs losses, WIFO’s report shows that “geographical closeness highly correlates with the relative size of the effects at the national level, with the Baltic countries, Finland and the Eastern European countries being hit above the EU average of 0.3 percent of GDP in the short and 0.8 percent in the long run.” The report also notes that Germany, which accounts for nearly 30 percent of all EU 27 exports to Russia, has been hit the hardest in absolute terms, and is projected to lose €23.38 billion in losses in the long term. Italy is second, with €10.93 billion in projected losses. France rounds out the top three with €7.92 billion in losses.

The study’s figures also show that Estonia is the single most heavily affected country in both the short and the long term, with the country suffering a €800 million (4.91 percent) and €2.1 billion (13.24 percent) decline, respectively. Estonia is followed by Lithuania (-6.37 percent long term), Cyprus (-3.25 percent), Latvia (-1.87 percent), and the Czech Republic (-1.53 percent).

In employment terms, Estonia, Lithuania and Cyprus are also the hardest hit in percentage terms, and are projected to suffer 16.3 percent, 10.84 percent and 4.21 percent losses, respectively. In absolute terms, Germany (losing 395,000 jobs) Poland (300,000), and Italy (200,000) have been the hardest hit; Spain, Lithuania and Estonia are projected to lose between 100,000 and 190,000 jobs.

As for the economic sectors most heavily impacted, the WIFO study found that agriculture and food products, metal products, machine-building, vehicles, and manufacturing-related services are hardest hit in the short term, with construction, business services, and wholesale and retail trade services also projected to suffer disproportionately in the long-term.

Speaking to Radio Sputnik about the report, WIFO economist Oliver Fritz noted that while EU politicians still hope that the sanctions will have some effect on Russian policy, pressure is building on them to change their policy, since the economic consequences are rapidly beginning to add up.

While the economist noted that he does not see the sanctions being lifted in the short term, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel successfully keeping other EU nations in line, Fritz noted that as losses mount, EU politicians may eventually decide to consider rethinking their decisions.

Last month, WIFO conducted research for Europe’s ‘Leading European Newspaper Alliance’, estimating up to €100 billion in losses if anti-Russian sanctions remain in place.

Since March 2014, the United States, European Union, and other Western countries have placed sanctions on Russia’s banking, defense and energy sectors over Moscow’s alleged role in the Ukrainian crisis. In August, Moscow imposed a year-long food embargo on the countries that had sanctioned it. Last month, the EU’s foreign ministers agreed to extend sanctions against Russia until January 31, 2016.

Fifty countries on Monday signed the articles of agreement for the new China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the first major global financial instrument independent from the Bretton Woods system.

Seven remaining countries out of the 57 that have applied to be founding members, Denmark, Kuwait, Malaysia, Philippines, Holland, South Africa and Thailand, are awaiting domestic approval.

“This will be a significant event. The constitution will lay a solid foundation for the establishment and operation of the AIIB,” said Chinese Finance Minister Lou Jiwei.

The AIIB will have an authorized capital of $100 billion, divided into shares that have a value of $100,000.

BRICS members China, India and Russia are the three largest shareholders, with a voting share of 26.06 per cent, 7.5 per cent and 5.92 per cent, respectively.

Following the signing of the bank’s charter, the agreement on the $100 billion AIIB will now have to be ratified by the parliaments of the founding members.

Asian countries will contribute up to 75 per cent of the total capital and be allocated a share of the quota based on their economic size.

Chinese Vice Finance Minister Shi Yaobin said China’s initial stake and voting share are “natural results” of current rules, and may be diluted as more members join.

Australia was first to sign the agreement in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Monday, state media reports said.

The Bank will base its headquarters in Beijing.

The Chinese Finance Ministry said the new lender will start operations by the end of 2015 under two preconditions: At least 10 prospective members ratify the agreement, and the initial subscribed capital is no less than 50 per cent of the authorized capital.

The AIIB will extend China’s financial reach and compete not only with the World Bank, but also with the Asian Development Bank, which is heavily dominated by Japan.

China and other emerging economies, including BRICS, have long protested against their limited voice at other multilateral development banks, including the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and Asian Development Bank (ADB).

China is grouped in the ‘Category II’ voting bloc at the World Bank while at the Asian Development Bank, China with a 5.5 per cent share is far outdone by America’s 15.7 per cent and Japan’s 15.6 per cent share.

The ADB has estimated that in the next decade Asian countries will need $8 trillion in infrastructure investments to maintain the current economic growth rate.

China scholar Asit Biswas at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Singapore, says Washington’s criticism of the China-led Bank is “childish”.

“Some critics argue that the AIIB will reduce the environmental, social and procurement standards in a race to the bottom. This is a childish criticism, especially because China has invited other governments to help with funding and governance,” he writes.

The US and Japan have not applied for the membership in the AIIB.

However, despite US pressures on its allies not to join the bank, Britain, France, Germany, Italy among others have signed on as founding members of the China-led Bank.

Meanwhile, New Zealand and Australia have already announced that they will invest $87.27 million and $718 million respectively as paid-in capital to the AIIB.

The new lender will finance infrastructure projects like the construction of roads, railways, and airports in the Asia-Pacific Region.

Iran, 49 states sign Asia bank charter

Iran on Monday joined 49 countries in signing up to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), bringing Asia’s largest financial lender a step closer to existence.

Finance and Economy Minister Ali Tayebnia put Iran’s signature to the bank’s articles of association at a ceremony in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, which capped six months of intense negotiations.

In April, China accepted Iran as a founding member of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank being seen as a rival to the US-led World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Asian Development Bank.

With the signing which amounted to the creation of AIIB’s legal framework, China’s Finance Minister Lou Jiwei said he was confident the bank could start functioning before the end of the year.

Seven more founding members would ink the articles after approval by their respective governments.

The bank will have a capital of $100 billion in the form of shares, each worth $100,000, distributed among the members. Beijing will be by far the largest shareholder at about 30%, followed by India at 8.4% and Russia at 6.5%.

China will also have 26% of the votes which are not enough to give it a veto on decision-making, while smaller members will have larger voice.

Singapore’s Senior Minister for Finance and Transport Josephine Teo said the bank will provide new opportunities for its members’ businesses and promote sustainable growth in Asia.

Seventy-five percent of AIIB’s shares are distributed within the Asian region while the rest is assigned among countries beyond it.

Germany, France and Brazil are among the non-Asian members of the bank despite US efforts to dissuade allies from joining it. Another US ally joining AIIB is Australia but Japan has stayed away from it.

Countries beyond the region can expand their share but the portion cannot be bigger than 30%. Public procurement of the AIIB will be open to all countries around the world.

But the president of the bank will have to be chosen from the Asian region for a maximum of two consecutive five-year terms.

The bank will be headquartered in Beijing and its lean structure will be overseen by an unpaid, non-resident board of directors which, architects say, would save it money and friction in decision-making.

Earlier this month, former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke rebuked US lawmakers for allowing China to found the new bank, which threatens to upend Washington’s domination over the world economic order.

He said lawmakers were to blame because they refused to agree 2010 reforms that would have given greater clout to China and other emerging powers in the International Monetary Fund.

Russia has censured the United States and its NATO allies for “violating” the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) by conducting nuclear planning and missions.

“The so-called joint nuclear missions practiced by the United States and their NATO allies are a serious violation of the said treaty,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement released on Thursday.

The statement also called for the return of all US nuclear weapons to the country, a ban on nuclear warheads abroad and the dismantling of the technology that facilitates the use of nuclear weapons as well as abstaining from nuclear exercises.

Back in April, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Washington is breaching the NPT by deploying its nuclear weapons in Belgium, Italy, Turkey, Germany and the Netherlands.

Also in March, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich urged the US, as a NATO member, to withdraw its nuclear weapons from Europe, highlighting that their deployment on the continent violates the NPT.

“We have repeatedly drawn NATO’s attention to the fact that such practices directly run counter to the spirit and the letter of NPT,” he said on March 24.

The remarks came days after the US State Department spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, claimed that “the deployment of US nuclear weapons on the territories of our NATO allies is consistent with the NPT.”

Under the article 1 of NPT, no country is allowed to transfer its nuclear weapons to other parties while article 2 of the treaty prohibits those countries lacking nuclear know-how from having access to nuclear weapons, Lukashevich stated, adding that the US deployment of nuclear arms in Europe infringes upon the terms of the agreement.

Washington-Moscow relations have become markedly tense in recent months. The US and NATO accuse the Kremlin of supporting pro-Russia forces in east Ukraine. Russia categorically denies the allegation, saying NATO’s presence near the Russian borders is responsible for the flare-up in the restive region.

German political prisoner Horst Mahler was sentenced to over a decade in jail for doubting the Holocaust

Today, Thursday, June 11, 2015, at 11.30 AM, the council of the Federal Department for Media Harmful for Young Persons in Germany will be deciding whether Horst Mahler’s book Das Ende der Wanderschaft – Gedanken über Gilad Atzmon und die Judenheit (2013) (The End of the Wanderings – Reflections on Gilad Atzmon and Jewry) will be put on the harmful media index. Mahler wrote his book in his prison cell after reading Gilad Atzmon’s book The Wandering Who?A Study of Jewish Identity Politics (2011), sent to him by a friend.

Friedrich Bode, a retired Protestant minister and founding member of the Green Party, as well as Gerard Menuhin, son of the world famous violinist Yehudi Menuhin, will be there to defend the book.

Horst Mahler is Germany’s number one political prisoner. As a professional lawyer he encountered revisionist material when he was asked to defend a client over charges of “Holocaust Denial”. Although previously Mahler had identified himself on the radical left and had been a founding member of the Red Army Faction (RAF), he was shocked by the treatment of revisionist research in German courts with regard to Holocaust laws. Having been indoctrinated with guilt over the Holocaust, he found it deeply liberating to discover that Jews had been expelled from countries all over the world throughout the centuries, and that the expulsion of Jews from Germany was by no means a singular event.

Mahler maintains that Germany today is in effect a nation that is ruled by a foreign will. That foreign will is the will of the Jewish people, which manifests itself in Germany’s Holocaust laws and the numerous Holocaust memorials which literally pave the country. These, he believes, serve to reinforce German guilt. In Mahler’s analysis, such elements, along with the “re-education” programme implemented by the Allies (mainly through the mass media, educational institutions, politicians willing to execute this foreign will, and Jewish institutions), prevent the healthy self-expression of the German people. Such mechanisms need to be understood as part of a strategy of psychological warfare with the goal of effecting the “soul murder” of the German people. A people without a soul cannot survive physically. According to Mahler, this is a genocidal project that has its basis in the Jewish understanding of the German people as part of the nation of Amalek, the Biblical arch enemy whose “seed” must be destroyed.

Mahler frequently quotes Jewish philosopher and Rabbi Martin Buber to prove that the annihilation impulse exists in the Jewish people not only against the German people but also against every other nation, since Judaism embodies a stark “No to the lives of the peoples” (“ein Nein zum Leben der Völker” – meaning “no to the traditional ways of non-Jewish peoples”). According to Mahler, the German spirit and the Jewish spirit are antagonistic to each other, which is the root of the conflict. Whilst German philosophy is a deeply organic way of thinking that seeks to maintain sanctimonious harmony with nature, Jewish thinking and behaviour is the polar opposite, aiming at the destruction of naturally grown structures.

Mahler was sentenced to 12 years in prison for “incitement to the detriment of the Jews” and “Holocaust denial” in 2009. In his open letter to the Central Committee of Jews in Germany and the Jewish organisation “Sons of the Covenant” (B’nai B’rith), dated on August 2009, Mahler declares himself a personal prisoner of organised World Jewry (All-Juda).

Regarding incitement, it must be noted that Mahler nowhere calls for hostility against Jews, and explicitly says that hatred and physical harm against Jews must be prevented under any circumstances. His analysis of the current state of affairs is based on Hegelian philosophy, readings of Christian and Jewish Scripture, and a thorough understanding of the legal situation of present day Germany.

He has now served five years of his twelve-year term. At 79 years of age, German law should now permit him to leave prison early. However, authorities do not seem to be willing to act in accordance with the law in this case, and have asked Mahler to withdraw his proposal.

This is a very rough summary of Mahler’s positions. When writing in German, Mahler articulates his views in a well-informed, sophisticated and precise language.

US President Barack Obama will urge G7 leaders to keep sanctions in place against Russia at the G7 summit in Germany, US officials said. The US says it needs to “maintain the pressure” on Moscow.

The G7 nations will meet in Bavaria, Germany for a two-day summit beginning Sunday. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said that the sanctions imposed on Russia will be on the agenda.

“In my understanding, the president plans to talk with the European leaders about the necessity to continue the sanctions, which are already in place. This will be part of the discussion,” Earnest told a press briefing. He added, though, that he “would acknowledge that we have not yet seen the kind of change in behavior that we have long fought for.”

Charles Kupchan, the White House Senior Director for European Affairs, confirmed that meetings at the summit will be centered on the US and Europe putting pressure on Moscow.

“The president will be making the case to his European colleagues that the European Union should move ahead and extend sanctions when they end,” Kupchan said.

The US has criticized Russia recently for an increase in fighting in Eastern Ukraine. However, on Thursday, the Kremlin released a statement saying that the tensions, which had been stoked by Kiev, were increased to coincide with the upcoming EU summit, which is to take place in Brussels on June 25-26.

“Yes, indeed, in the past Kiev had already heated up tensions amid some large international events. This is the case, and now we are seriously concerned about the next repetition of such activity,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

However, rather than further looking to sideline Moscow, German Chancellor Angela Merkel says that it is essential to continue cooperation with Russia in a number of key international questions.

“Of course we want and should cooperate with the Russian Federation,” Merkel told the DPA news agency. “In order to settle some conflicts, such as the one in Syria, we cannot go forward without Russia’s help. Therefore I support maintaining contact with President Vladimir Putin.”

The Obama administration says that the longer the sanctions are in place, “the more of an economic bite they take out of the Russian economy.” However, the sanctions are also having a negative effect on a number of EU members who have been hurt by Russian counter-sanctions.

“I think these sanctions are affecting Europe much more as a whole than was expected, and the others on the other side of the Atlantic are not affected at all,” said former Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, who spoke to RT in November.

Some EU nations are becoming wary of introducing further sanctions against Moscow. During a visit to Moscow in March by the Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades, he stated: “[Russia and Cyprus] will cooperate without paying attention to who is reacting or who may have concerns,” according to CNA.

The current EU sanctions expire in June, after which time the bloc will hold a vote on prolonging them. However, a Russian politician, Leonid Kalashnikov, says he is confident that the bloc will not look to impose further measures against Moscow as it will not be in their interests.

“As far as new sanctions are concerned, now I am sure that Europe is very unlikely to impose them, because there are nations that would not agree to this – Greece, Cyprus, Hungary and Italy. And if even a single nation does not agree there would be no decision, such is the voting procedure,” Kalashnikov, the deputy head of the State Duma’s committee for international relations, told the Izvestia daily.
Obama: ‘We have to twist arms when we need to’

Kalashnikov also said that almost daily meetings are held in the State Duma with foreign politicians who are trying to find a way to resume dialogue with Russia.

In February, Spain evaluated the losses suffered by the EU in the “sanctions war” with Russia at €21 billion ($23.78 billion).

In December 2014, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said the US was “twisting arms” of their own allies so that they could continue an “anti-Russian front” and follow US policies on sanctions against Russia.

“But the US is not ashamed of insisting on cooperation with us [Russia] on matters affecting its own interests,” he said. He used the example of the Iranian nuclear talks, in which both Russia and the US take part.

Even President Obama admitted that: “We occasionally have to twist the arms of countries that wouldn’t do what we need them to do,” in an interview with Vox in February.

Even Washington has found the sanctions they have implemented against Russia have not always served their own interests. The US discreetly managed to create a loophole in its sanctions against Russia to allow communications software to be exported to Crimea to try and limit Moscow’s ability “to control the narrative of local events,” according to the Commerce Department, which was cited by Bloomberg.

The move comes after the State Department’s former senior adviser for innovation, Alec Ross, mentioned that the Russians have done “an excellent job of flooding the zone in Crimea with their propaganda,” and that the US needed to introduce media platforms in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, which Moscow would be unable to control.

Reprieve | June 2, 2015

The German Federal Prosecutor is reported to have begun investigating a US base in Germany that is used as a ‘hub’ for drone strikes, days after a Yemeni man testified in a Cologne court about the 2012 strike that killed his relatives.

According to a report in Der Spiegel, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office – Germany’s highest prosecuting authority – has launched a ‘monitoring process’ to ascertain whether activities at Ramstein, a US base in Germany, violate international law. The officials have reportedly requested documents from German authorities, including the Ministry of Defence, relating to the base – which was recently revealed to be a ‘hub’ for the facilitation of drone strikes in Yemen and elsewhere. US drone strikes in countries such as Yemen, where the US has not declared war, have killed hundreds of civilians, and are widely regarded as a violation of international law.

The news comes days after a court in Cologne heard testimony from a Yemeni man who lost his relatives in a strike – the first time any court has heard from drone victims. Faisal bin Ali Jaber lost his brother-in-law Salim, an anti-Al Qaeda preacher, and his nephew Waleed, a police officer, to a 2012 US strike on his village of Khashamir. The German case sees Mr bin Ali Jaber – represented by international human rights organization Reprieve and the European Center for Human Rights (ECCHR) – seeking to challenge Germany’s failure to stop the use of Ramstein for US drone strikes. Although the court last week ruled against Mr bin Ali Jaber, judges agreed with his assertion that it is ‘plausible’ the base is central to the launching of the strikes, and gave him immediate permission to appeal their decision.

Commenting, Kat Craig, Mr bin Ali Jaber’s Reprieve lawyer, said: “The civilian impact of the US’ drone wars in Yemen and elsewhere is well-documented – as is the crucial role played by Ramstein in facilitating these illegal strikes. The prosecutor’s move to investigate the use of German soil in violating international law is a crucial first step in lifting the veil of secrecy over the drone programme. For Faisal – and the scores of other people whose relatives were unlawfully killed in drone strikes – this decision is long overdue. Nothing will bring back their loved ones, but a full and proper investigation into the role of Ramstein will finally shed some light on the role of the German government in the drone programme. Our clients hope that, in doing so, Germany will do the right thing and withdraw support for the US’ drone war, once and for all.”

The United States is perhaps the principle nuclear weapons proliferator in the world today, openly flouting binding provisions of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Article I of the treaty forbids signers from transferring nuclear weapons to other states, and Article II prohibits signers from receiving nuclear weapons from other states.

As the UN Review Conference of the NPT was finishing its month-long deliberations in New York last week, the US delegation distracted attention from its own violations using its standard Red Herring warnings about Iran and North Korea — the former without a single nuclear weapon, and the latter with 8-to-10 (according to those reliable weapons spotters at the CIA) but with no means of delivering them.

The NPT’s prohibitions and obligations were re-affirmed and clarified by the world’s highest judicial body in its July 1996 Advisory Opinion on the legal status of the threat or use of nuclear weapons. The International Court of Justice said in this famous decision that the NPT’s binding promises not to transfer or receive nuclear weapons are unqualified, unequivocal, unambiguous and absolute. For these reasons, US violations are easy to illustrate.

Nuclear Missiles “Leased” to British Navy

The US “leases” submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles (SLBMs) to Britain for use on its four giant Trident submarines. We’ve done this for two decades. The British subs travel across the Atlantic to pick up the US-made missiles at Kings Bay Naval base in Georgia.

Helping to ensure that US proliferation involves only of the most verifiably terrible nuclear weapons, a senior staff engineer at Lockheed Martin in California is currently responsible for planning, coordinating and carrying out development and production of the “UK Trident Mk4A [warhead] Reentry Systems as part of the UK Trident Weapons System ‘Life Extension program.’” This, according to John Ainslie of the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which closely watchdogs the British Tridents — all of which are based in Scotland, much to the chagrin of the Scots.

Even the W76 warheads that arm the US-owned missiles leased to England have parts made in United States. The warheads use a Gas Transfer System (GTS) which stores tritium — the radioactive form of hydrogen that puts the “H” in H-bomb — and the GTS injects tritium into the plutonium warhead or “pit.” All the GTS devices used in Britain’s Trident warheads are manufactured in the United States. They are then either sold to the Royals or given away in exchange for an undisclosed quid pro quo.

David Webb, the current Chair of the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament reported during the NPT Review Conference, and later confirmed in an email to Nukewatch, that the Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico announced, in March 2011, that it had conducted “the first W76 United Kingdom trials test” at its Weapons Evaluation and Test Laboratory (WETL) in New Mexico, and that this had “provided qualification data critical to the UK [United Kingdom] implementation of the W76-1.” The W76 is a 100 kiloton H-bomb designed for the so-called D-4 and D-5 Trident missiles. One of the centrifuges at Sandia’s WETL simulates the ballistic trajectory of the W76 “reentry-vehicle” or warhead. This deep and complex collusion between the US and the UK could be called Proliferation Plus.

The majority of the Royal Navy’s Trident warheads are manufactured at England’s Aldermaston nuclear weapons complex, allowing both the Washington and London to claim they are in compliance with the NPT.

US H-bombs Deployed in Five NATO Countries

An even clearer violation of the NPT is the US deployment of between 184 and 200 thermonuclear gravity bombs, called B61, in five European countries — Belgium, The Netherlands, Italy, Turkey and Germany. “Nuclear sharing agreements” with these equal partners in the NPT — all of whom declare that they are “non-nuclear states” — openly defy both Article I and Article II of the treaty.

The US is the only country in the world that deploys nuclear weapons to other countries, and in the case of the five nuclear sharing partners, the US Air Force even trains Italian, German, Belgian, Turkish and Dutch pilots in the use of the B61s in their own warplanes — should the President ever order such a thing. Still, the US government regularly lectures other states about their international law violations, boundary pushing and destabilizing actions.

With so much a stake, it is intriguing that diplomats at the UN are too polite to confront US defiance of the NPT, even when the extension and enforcement of it is on the table. As Henry Thoreau said, “The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it.”

Reprieve | May 27, 2015

A German court has granted ‘immediate permission to appeal’ to a Yemeni man in his case seeking to expose and put an end to the German government’s role in the U.S. covert drone programme in Yemen.

Faisal bin Ali Jaber, an environmental engineer from Sana’a who had two relatives killed in a 2012 drone strike, had his evidence heard in a Cologne court today. Mr bin Ali Jaber – represented by international human rights charity Reprieve and its local partner the European Center for Human Rights (ECCHR) brought the case against Germany, following revelations that Ramstein air base is crucial to facilitating American covert drone strikes in Yemen.

Although the court ruled against Mr bin Ali Jaber in today’s hearing, it gave him immediate permission to appeal the decision, while the judges agreed with his assertion that it is ‘plausible’ Ramstein air base plays a key role in facilitating drone strikes in Yemen.

Mr Jaber lost his brother-in-law Salim, a preacher, and his nephew Waleed, a local police officer, to a US drone strike which hit the village of Khashamir on 29 August 2012. Salim often spoke out against extremism, and had used a sermon just days before he was killed to urge those present to reject Al Qaeda.

Faisal bin Ali Jaber said: “I had hoped that today the Court would restore Yemen’s faith in the West’s commitment to the rule of law, and that the German government would put a stop to its role in these illegal and immoral operations. It is shameful that they won’t even admit to the part they play in killing innocent civilians and terrorising entire communities. But we will not give up: it is – quite simply – a matter of life or death for us. I am of course disappointed by the outcome today, but remain grateful to the court for hearing my case and am pleased that they have encouraged me to appeal. This is just the beginning of our efforts and I will continue to place my faith in the justice system and the rule of law, to find a peaceful and sustainable way to keep myself and my family safe, and end the devastation brought to my country by drones.”

Kat Craig, Reprieve legal director which represents Mr bin Ali Jaber said: “Without Germany – and other Western allies – the U.S. could not fly the drones that kill innocent civilians like my client Faisal’s family in Yemen. For too long, the drone programme has been allowed to operate in the shadows – away from judicial and public scrutiny. Whilst we may have lost today, this hearing was an important step in the direction of greater transparency and accountability for the US and its allies in its illegal and immoral drone programme. We may not yet have achieved the end to Germany’s role in the illegal U.S. drone war in Yemen, but this simply means that we must redouble our efforts to support our clients in their attempts to end the death and suffering that drones bring in Yemen.”

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From the Archives

By Joshua Blakeney | Press TV | August 31, 2013

In a recent tweet Stephen Walt, professor of International Relations at Harvard and co-author of the seminal text The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy wrote, “Note to advocates of military action in Syria: please tell us ur endgame: where does using force lead and who’s in charge if Assad goes?”

I would answer, that from the perspective of the Israeli-guided Western imperialists the answer would be: nobody. Israel and its de facto puppet regimes in Ottawa, London, Paris and Washington want Syria to be a dysfunctional, ungovernable failed state, rather than a sovereign Arab state led by an intelligent, anti-Zionist strongman.

It ought to be kept in mind that the post-WWII US military doctrine for the Middle East was the Eisenhower Doctrine which promoted the fomentation of stability in the region to facilitate the flow of oil to Americans. This was fine if you were safely ensconced in Houston or Dallas with your oil companies raking in profits from Middle East oil fields but for Israel this policy was disastrous. The funneling of petro-dollars to Israel’s adversaries like Saddam Hussein, who fired scud missiles at Israel in 1991, and to the likes of President Assad was intolerable. Therefore a schism in the Empire soon emerged and two distinct US-Zionist visions for the Middle East crystallized. … continue

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This article will examine some of the connections between the US and UK National Security apparatus and the appearance of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory beginning after the accident at Three Mile Island. … continue

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